Twenty-seven Cuban migrants jumped off a makeshift wooden board and scrambled onshore near Miami on Sunday, the Miami Herald reported.
Fifteen of the migrants were found and arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Miami police, but 12 of them remained at large, the newspaper reported.
There were 25 men and two women on the boat, WTVJ reported.
The migrants in custody were taken to the Dania Beach Border Patrol station for “further processing and removal,’’ according to Keith E. Smith, a spokesman for the U.S. Border and Customs Protection Office.
"There's like 20, 30 people inside the boat and they're all getting out, you know. People have been out there for eight days," Juan Montoya, who was on the beach at Virginia Key, told WPLG. "One of them told me he was there working on it for three weeks at his house."
Miami Fire Rescue officials said they gave medical evaluations to 12 men and one woman, WTVJ reported.
The migrants will most likely be sent back to Cuba, the Herald reported.
Before he left office in January 2017, President Barack Obama lifted the "wet foot, dry foot policy" that guaranteed residency to Cubans when they landed onshore in the United States.
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